There is no-one hipper than Johnny Depp. Unless it is Johnny Depp just having sold his yacht to J.K. Rowling for 22 million pounds. No, that is not a typo, although it is by all accounts small potatoes in the oligarch’s world of super-yachts.
Rowling, too, has moved on, and the Arriva has arrived at a berth in Kingston’s Rondout district. It is a beautiful boat, and seeing it in person inspired in me an irresistible urge to reread Death on the Nile. How did Christie’s novel hold up over the years? Even when I either remembered or guessed the answer early on, it remains a classic piece of misdirection, as well as the kind of stylish series of star turns that has inspired numberless glossy adaptations.
So why did Kenneth Branagh feel impelled to muck around with it? Okay, any reason to let Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French unleash their comic talents can be forgiven. And I would listen to Russell Brand read the phone book. But many of the other changes feel like Branagh is ticking off boxes on a checklist. Poirot has a backstory. Check. Inclusive casting. Check. Don’t portray diverse characters as victims, even when it completely changes Christie’s original plot. Check.
Christie is very much a product of her time and place, and her limitations, especially her antisemitism, have already been widely comment upon. However, Branagh’s changes do nothing to address such insensitivities as Christie’s portraying native Egyptians solely as urchins and hawkers. Even more unforgivable in my mind is Branagh’s “humanizing” Poirot, to the point of giving his mustache (!?) a backstory. Christie made it clear that, unlike Miss Marple, her other great detective, Poirot was a powerless outsider, and that is the source of his greatness as as a detective. The suspects and even the murderer underestimate him, while he has the necessary detachment to evaluate the suspects’ behavior, unencumbered by any assumptions or emotional attachments. To explore the roots of his character in trauma does the great detective and Mrs. Christie a great disservice.
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